12 Most Overlooked Meat Loaf Songs From Every Album
4. Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose (2006) - It's All Coming Back To Me Now
That falling out with Jim Steinman resulted in the svengali refusing to contribute any new songs to the final album in the Bat trilogy. Undeterred by the absence of the man that many people considered had made him a star in the first place, Meat Loaf cherry picked some of Steinman's older songs to shoehorn into his album's track listing. The top pick was always going to be It's All Coming Back To Me Now.
Originally recorded in 1989 as the lead single for his all-girl band project Pandora's Box, the song, album and band sank without trace due to the record company's failure to release the singles in the US. However, ever since hearing Elaine Caswell's huge, beautiful voice on the original, Meat Loaf had wanted It's All Coming Back To Me for himself.
The story varies from teller to teller, but supposedly Steinman persuaded him that I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) should be the centrepiece and main single on 1993's Bat Out Of Hell: Back Into Hell, with It's All Coming Back To Me Now saved for the third Bat album.
Instead, Steinman (who believed the song had to be sung by a woman) gave it to Celine Dion. Dion loved the song so much she placed it as the opening track and lead single on her 1996 album Falling Into You, using the exact same arrangement as the original, even down to the sound effects. Meat Loaf was furious, and allegedly tried to sue to prevent its release. He failed: it was a huge hit, part of the soundtrack of 1996.
So why is Meat Loaf's own version - a decent hit in 2006 - so overlooked? Well, aside from the fact that Celine Dion's version will always overshadow any other attempt at the song, Meat Loaf's interpretation radically differed. Steinman's typically overwrought lyric about a woman's obsessive love for a vanished, possibly abusive lover had been rearranged into a call and response duet between Meat and Norwegian singer/songwriter Marion Raven.
In doing so, Meat Loaf transformed the song from a cliche about a woman helpless in the face of a toxic relationship into a paean to the redemptive, boundary-breaking power of love between soulmates. It’s yet more proof (if you really needed it by now) that Steinman’s songs might have made Meat Loaf, but no one sang them like Meat Loaf.